"There's a lot that could go wrong there," Musk said. Those three cores are arranged in an "octaweb" structure.Īll that firepower makes for a chancy rocket launch, Musk said last July at the 2017 International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, D.C. The rocket's first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores, adding up to 27 Merlin engines. "Falcon Heavy has the potential to open up commercial space to deep space for the first time ever." "This is in many ways the most significant launch since the first shuttle launch in April of 1981," Dylan Taylor, an active angel investor in commercial space ventures, told.
No matter how you look at it, the Falcon Heavy is a big deal. "A flight is concluded upon SpaceX's last exercise of control over the Falcon Heavy vehicle, including the safing of Falcon Heavy vehicle stages or components that reach a hyperbolic orbit."
"Flight includes landing of the Falcon Heavy first stage core and side boosters as indicated in the license application," the license states.
That license gives the go-ahead for flight of the huge rocket, noting that flight begins with ignition of the first stage from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and transportation of the modified Tesla Roadster as a "mass simulator" to a hyperbolic orbit with the sun, meaning on a trajectory that will allow it to escape Earth's gravity. 2, the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation issued its launch authorization for the Falcon Heavy via Transportation License Number: LLS 18-107.Ī Tesla Roadster tops SpaceX's Heavy launcher. However, McKnight said "it is huge waste of a beautiful car, so I would be happy to take the brand-new red Tesla off his hands, and he can send my five-year old silver Prius into space." "The enthusiasm and interest that he generates more than offsets the infinitesimally small 'littering' of the cosmos." "He is shipping it out of Earth orbit, so I do not think that there is any risk here," said orbital-debris expert Darren McKnight, technical director for Integrity Applications in Chantilly, Virginia. Back in the early development days of NASA's Saturn V booster, several Saturn C-1 test boosters carried thousands of gallons of water to mimic the weight of fully fueled "live" rocket stages.īut does shooting a Roadster into space constitute a frivolous addition to orbital debris?
Hurling into space using an automobile as a mass simulator is certainly a first.